Photos by Barbara Bradley/Special to The Commercial Appeal
Retrotherapy jewelry designer Nancy Barry of Memphis created Bobbie bracelets of linked vintage earbobs and other bracelets. Barry’s leather cuffs are adorned with steel-cut French shoe buckles and other vintage ornaments.

Difficult times can often be a wellspring of creativity. For Memphian Nancy Barry, that time came during her late mother's illness.

"She was in Hattiesburg, and I was in Memphis. I couldn't be with her and I had anxiety and insomnia," she said. "I wanted to make something wearable with my mother's old pins that were just sitting in a drawer."

She went online, got ideas and in January of 2012 began putting the brooches of her mother, some inherited from Barry's grandmother, on leather cuff bracelets. "It was a way to work with my hands and be creative," she said.

In May of 2012, soon after her mother died, she had her first jewelry trunk show at a Memphis boutique. This spring she began selling wholesale.

Barry, who is a part-time physical therapist, calls her collection of re-purposed vintage jewelry and accessories Retrotherapy. Working with pieces from estate sales, flea markets and family heirlooms from Southern homes, she creates bracelets, necklaces and earrings and also had redesigned and adorned clutch purses.

Some of her most popular pieces are leather cuff bracelets, some made from repurposed belts, adorned with French steel-cut shoe buckles.

Other popular items are what she calls "Bobbie bracelets" made of linked vintage "earbobs," an old name for ornate clip earrings.

The buckle bracelets are $120 to $150 and the Bobbie bracelets are $65 to $155.

Southern women have shown their appreciation for these one-of-a-kind pieces. Barry's jewelry has been either carried or featured in Memphis and Collierville at Bella Viaggia, Past and Presents Collective Boutique, Social, Crazy Beautiful, The Yellow House on Union and Lavish and at two more boutiques in Hattiesburg and Clarksdale.

Lavish has been most successful with the suede and leather cuffs with vintage pins and buckles, said owner Renea Medlin. Some of the bracelets "have a hipster feeling that some girls are into," she said. She thinks her customers in their 40s and 50s "love having something to remind them of something in their mothers' closets."

Medlin said she expects to have more Retrotherapy bracelets with a lighter feeling for spring. Her customers have been much into statement necklaces, she noted, but she senses earrings and bracelets may be on the way back. At Lavish, "We like to gently move them toward the next trend," she said.

As you would expect, Barry also makes custom jewelry out of pieces from a patron's own jewelry box. How many of us have old, single earrings and broken pieces useless now but too pretty and too much a part of our past to give up?

"I also use men's cuff links and tie tacks," she said, "anything that has sentimental value. It's my favorite things to do."

Barry is the mother of two, lives with her family in East Memphis and works out of her home. Her work can be purchased through facebook.com/retro.nancy.

You can see her new spring pieces at the Agricenter International Spring Market, April 4-6, and at Southern Junkers Spring Market, April 11-12, at 11625 U.S. 64 in Eads.